Well, the family’s back from the cottage so the flat is nice and noisy again. I had a couple of days of quiet to get things done and watch whatever I wanted to on TV in English, but I was soon bored.

After I finished reading A Confederacy of Dunces, I looked at the table of contents on Kindle and there was a book there I hadn’t read, but I’m sure Kindle just put it there, they do crap like that and I resent it, because I don’t want to just pay for random shit and you know they’re just counting on people not noticing. But, with nothing else to read, I started it.

It was a sci-fi fantasy by a female author, with a romantic premise. I guess their algorithm picked up on the fact that I like science fiction and my wife reads a lot of Nicholas Sparks, so the Kindle Book Selector Robot input those two concepts and spat out Persephone: A Space Opera, in which Princess Aja, who can totally see the future even though she described it at first as more like mind reading. It’s way more than mind reading. It has something to do with her blood, and then when she mixes blood with somebody like in an elementary school blood brother type ritual, she gets emotionally totally unified with that person, and she did that to Captain Kirk/Han Solo, I don’t remember what his name is and I’m pretty sure no physical description was ever given, but you get the idea.

Lots of sex happening, and somehow none of it is in the least erotic, or romantic, and they’re being chased hither and yon through asteroid belts that only she can navigate (this blood thing makes her a super pilot, too) by the evil general Bom, who probably wants to kill her, or at least steal all of her blood, and besides, he’s her father, but somehow all tension and excitement have been removed.

This is the downside of self-publishing. Average people, who write well enough to keep a diary or compose a business letter, make up a story out of their own sexual fantasies and put it down on the page.
I shouldn’t criticize. It’s probably as good as anything I’ve got published, and I’m close to certain it’s sold more copies, because that’s such a low bar it’s lying on the sidewalk and, I must confess, I got 6 chapters in before I put it down and said “What am I doing?”

So, if you ever come across it by accident and find yourself reading, don’t let me stop you. Enjoy. But I’m not recommending it.